Sunday, June 21, 2015

Passing While Black: Rachel Dolezal And The Fight For Racial Justice

Rachel Dolezal

I’ve always felt that one of the key reasons for the
persistence of racism in American society is that most white people simply don’t
get it, and probably never will. No appeals to reason or presentation of data
on racial inequality will help.

Put simply, most white people don’t get it is because they
are unable to walk in black people’s shoes.

To use the words of Atticus Finch in Harper Lee’s classic, To Kill a Mockingbird, "You never
really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view …
until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”

It is easy for white people to see the world from their
vantage point, but it takes a lot of empathic effort to step outside your own
interests and needs and into the shoes of black people and see and experience
this country as an African American.

Rachel Dolezal – a blond and paled-skinned white woman without
a hint of African heritage from Montana – stepped into black shoes, changed her
appearance by transforming herself into a black woman, and attempted to “see and
experience this country” as a black person.

Her decision to self-identify as African American has set
off a firestorm of controversy, launching a national debate about the meaning of racial identity. While some in the black community applaud her passion and commitment
to African American causes while pretending to be black, others are highly critical
of her deception, see too close a parallel to Blackface, and believe she was
motivated by her sense of white privilege rather than a deep commitment to racial
justice.

The national conversation about race and
identity has been quite fascinating. Although it has been proven that biological
race is an illusion, most people appear to cling to the idea that genetically
homogenous populations exist, and intentionally (or unintentionally) defend
those boundaries. Dolezal has been unapologetic about her
decision to catapult across the color line.When asked by Matt Lauer on NBC’s Today Show, when did she decide to deceive people about her racial
identity, she responded, “I do take exception to that because it’s a little
more complex than me identifying as black, or answering a question of, ‘Are you
black or white?’ ” she said. In a series of interviews later that day, she also
described herself as “transracial” and said: “Well, I definitely am not white.
Nothing about being white describes who I am.”

Dolezal told Lauer that from an early age, she has “identified
as being black.” At the age of 5 she colored her self-portraits
in brown rather than peach crayon and gave herself curly black hair, not the
straight blonde hair she inherited from her biological parents.

I may be in the minority, but I believe that Dolezal’s identification with the African
American community and black culture and her commitment to racial and social
justice is genuine. I also think her deception was a calculated risk she took
for a reason. I take her at her word when she said to Lauer, "overall, my
life has been one of survival, and the decisions that I have made along the
way, including my identification, have been to survive."Given the lack of empathy a majority of whites have for
black suffering and the hostility that accompanies even modest attempts to alleviate
that suffering if it clashes with white interests and needs, Dolezal’s faced a
difficult choice. She decided that her only option was to literally be a race traitor.The reality is that white people who work closely with black
people and become heavily involved in black causes run the risk of being heavily
criticized by other whites, and perhaps even ostracized by friends and
family.Dolezal’s family proves my point. Her parents and siblings have
not shied away from any opportunity they get to step in front of a TV camera to
out her as being “genetically white” and denounce her as a fraud.But, it is not impossible for whites, as Theologian Reinhold
Niebuhr put it to “have eyes to see and heart to feel” what most whites are “too
blind and too callous to notice.”

In my experience working alongside white leaders of mostly
white social justice organizations (primarily as a member of the board) – in groups
such as Connecticut Citizen Action Group (CCAG), Connecticut Center for a New
Economy (CCNE) and Common Cause Connecticut (CCCT) - I’ve been impressed with
their ability to empathize with the experiences of black people (it is
important to say, however, that the work is far from perfect).

But, they are not enough; they are in the minority. We need
more people like them going out into white communities, especially Whitopia – a
city and county in the U.S. that is whiter than the nation, its respective
region, and its state – and organizing whites around racial and social justice.In many ways, Dolezal took the easy route; she put on a
black mask and avoided the really hard work of working within white communities
where people like her are most needed today.Ironically, Dolezal has suffered a fate somewhat similar to
that of blacks who crossed the “color line” and passed for white. Many African
Americans “light” enough to pass lived in constant fear of being caught. The
price paid would often mean a loss of their job and if they lived among whites,
being forcefully expelled from the community. For some, it could mean being
lynched.Of course, Dolezal doesn’t face the same risks faced by blacks
passing as white in the late 19th and early 20th Century
- I’m not aware of any death threats she’s received nor has she described
living with the same kind of existential fear of being outed – but she has paid
a price for her racial deception. She resigned from her position as president
of the Spokane chapter of the NAACP. She lost her teaching job at Eastern
Washington University. She has been accused of making false statements to the
police about racially motivated harassment and intimidation.I hope she recovers soon and gets back to work. But this time, as a white women committed to racial justice working to challenge and transform white America's racial attitudes and behaviors.